by Meg Haston
Bridge murmurs at the window. “I think you’re gonna have to park on the street.”
“Yeah.” I find the closest street parking, just a block from the water, and I get this crazy idea to take her hands in mine and look into the deepest part of her and say, Screw this. Let’s just go to the beach, you and me, and swim out as far as we can. It’s a stupid thought, an embarrassing Real Me thought, the kind of thing that only happens in movies. People don’t ditch their high-school graduations for the ocean. People sit quietly and smile when they get their diploma. People pretend that this is the shit that matters, that this is some kind of Big Life Moment.
Bullshit.
A Big Life Moment is standing over your drunk father with a golf club. A Big Life Moment is circling the police station six times in your truck, telling yourself to grow a pair and go inside. Tell them what really happened. Fix this.
I reach for her hand as we walk toward school, and she lets me take it. Her hand is small and cool and dry. I think that’s a good sign, somehow.
“Are you, ah, doing anything after this?” I ask, looking straight ahead.
“I don’t know. Minna’s in the hospital. I might go see her.”
“Is she gonna be okay?’
“I don’t know, really,” she says. “Hey, did you ever get to know Ned Reilly?” Her hair is whipping around her face, a sunset in a million strands. My throat shrinks, and I want to tell her how sorry I am, but sorry isn’t the word. There isn’t a word for this.
“Not really. How come?”
“He’s giving the valedictorian speech today and he’s just, like, a nice guy. And I’ve been thinking about high school and about how many people I don’t know and how I lost a lot of time for really stupid reasons.”
I don’t know if she’s talking about us, and I’m too tired to ask.
The closer we get to school, the slower we walk. There are parents with giant bouquets, wearing cameras around their necks. There are kids from my class who don’t look like kids today, but they’re not adults, either. It reminds me of that Alice Cooper song: “I’m Eighteen.” It’s all about being stuck between being a boy and a man. That’s exactly how I feel: stuck in the in-between, floating, waiting to land somewhere. And I won’t know where until Bridge says her peace.
We stop by the classroom with A–H posted over the door and Bridge ducks in and comes out with our caps and gowns. We put them on and I feel kind of stupid, standing in front of her in a bright purple gown, but she looks at me like I shouldn’t feel stupid at all. I wish this could be a normal day for us. I wish our parents were in the audience, all four of them, smiling and snapping pictures. I wish our families could go to Nina’s together after the ceremony, and I wish we could go back to my house and there would be a Publix sheet cake in the refrigerator, and it would say CONGRATULATIONS, BRIDGE & WIL in blue icing, because this is real and important.
I wish.
We gather outside the gym, all of us, milling around, strange and nervous. Señora Thompson lines us up and inside the gym, the band starts playing. My whole body constricts.
I follow Bridge inside, down the shiny aisle, and onto the fake stage that sounds like it might collapse under so much potential. The principal is standing at the podium with a big plastic smile. We wind down a row of metal folding chairs, and once the whole class is on the stage, we sit.
I hear a stifled sob in the crowd, and I know it’s her. My mother is a broken woman, and I don’t think that will ever change. If I could rewind us, change some tiny thing in history to make her whole again, I’d do it. Even if it meant my parents never meeting. Me not existing. I’d do it.
“Today,” the principal says too close to the microphone, “is the first day of the rest of your lives.”
Damned if he’s not half right. Today could be our first day, or it could be our last. Bridge is holding us—Real Me—in her hands, and there’s no one I trust more, and still I’m scared as hell. For days now, I’ve had this panicked feeling moving through me, this cold adrenaline flood. It’s the exact same feeling I got when Bridge and I swam too far past the breakers as kids. By the time I realized we’d gone out too far, I’d almost lost her.
Truth is, I’m scared of losing her more than I’m scared of anything else that could happen to me. I’m small, compared to the ocean, compared to the whole world. What happens to me doesn’t matter, as long as Bridge loves me, still. I’ve told myself a million times: Whatever she decides, I’ll take it like a man. Even though I want what I want so bad it burns. I want her to go to college and I want to work on the boats and I want us to be an everyday kind of happy. I think my dad would say that’s too many wants, and he’s probably right.
I wait. I wait while the principal talks about horizons and making an impact, and he even says something about the future being so bright, we’ve gotta wear shades, and some of the parents laugh and none of the kids do. I wait while Ned Reilly stammers through a speech about how we are all one, how the successes of one of us are the successes of all of us, and the struggles of one of us are the struggles of all of us. I feel a hot, quick flash of anger. Ned Reilly knows nothing.
“And now, for the distribution of the diplomas. Please stand when I call your row,” says the principal.
I watch my classmates cross the stage, one by one, until it is Bridge’s turn, and then mine. We flip our tassels. We toss our hats in the air like purple Frisbees. My mom and Christine and Micah are waiting in the back corner of the gym. When I hug my mom, she squeezes the air out of me. She grips my head in her hands so hard, she might crack me open. She looks at me with wild eyes, and she wants to know. I try to tell her silently, but she doesn’t understand. My dad and I are the only ones who had that kind of connection.
“You kids want to go to brunch somewhere?” Christine asks. She slips her arm around my shoulders and squeezes. “Nina’s, maybe?”
“Oh, ah—” I stiffen. Glance at Bridge.
“Can Wil and I have a second, you guys?” She clears her throat, and looks at everyone but me. “Just to talk?”
“We’ll wait by the car,” Christine says, and she loops her arm around my mother’s shoulder and gives me a wink.
“Wil,” my mom says.
“Mom,” I say.
We edge out of the gym, past Leigh and her buttoned-up parents, past Ana and her nightgown dress, past Señora Thompson and the pitying smile she pitches at me every chance she gets. The courtyard is quiet and empty. Leigh’s mural is neon in the sun: a cartoon version of Florida. Lime-green palm fronds and a lemon sun and foamy waters. We slide down the wall, next to each other, and stare past the parking lot.
“Do you want to go to Nina’s or—” It’s the only thing I can think to say.
“Wil,” she says in a way that stops my heart. “I love you.”
I clench my teeth until my head throbs. “He would’ve killed me. Both of us,” I say, and I think it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Those words are the most awful words I’ve ever spoken.
“I know,” she whispers, sending tears down my cheeks. “You had no choice.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t.” I can feel my whole body collapsing into itself. I need her to hold me up. I need her.
“I know,” she says.
I close my eyes to stop the tears. It doesn’t work. “You’re going to the cops.” My mother will be alone. She’ll be completely alone. She won’t survive. I dig deep, mining for anger, for the thought how could she do this to me, but it just isn’t there.
I hear the swish of her hair as she shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know yet.”
“What do you know?”
“I know I love you. I know . . . I forgive you.” She sounds surprised at her own words.
“Okay, then. Okay.” Relief. I wipe tears with the heels of my hands.
“I have to think. I need time, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I need more time.” She kisses me, hard, her wet salt lips s
lipping against mine, and then she scrambles up and trips across the courtyard, her hair flying behind her. I watch her for as long as I can. I burn her image into memory: the girl with the fire hair and ice skin, the girl I won’t stop loving, no matter what.
BRIDGE
Summer After Senior Year
HE gives me time. I know it’s killing him.
It’s what I asked for, and I hate it. I feel the time away from him physically, deep inside: It’s the sharp sting of stepping on a broken shell, unrelenting. The choice I have to make is impossible. If I tell, it will end him. If I don’t, it will end us.
I spend my days doing other things, hoping that the answer will rise up to meet me like the tides rise to the sand. I spend hours at the hospital, combing Minna’s hair or stretched out on the ugly plastic chairs outside her room or in the coffee shop on the first floor, ordering Virginia and Elizabeth lattés they didn’t ask for. The nurses bend the rules for me. I stay long past visiting hours. Virginia doesn’t seem to mind. We wait. Sometimes together, mostly apart.
I hold Minna’s papery hand, and I tell her stories about Wil because Wil is my every thought. Wil stories are automatic. Countless blinks in a single minute. I tell Minna about the time Wil and I set up an Olympic course on the beach in the summer between fourth and fifth grades. There was a makeshift obstacle course, a one-on-one beach volleyball tournament, and medals made out of tinfoil. There were no ties, because in real life, there are no ties. We sang the national anthem and trilled on the high notes.
I cheated during the driftwood dash. Wil had won too many events in a row. So when he neared the last driftwood hurdle, I moved it. Just a little, with my toe. He fell and hit the sand hard, scraped his knee. I crouched next to him as we inspected the wound. There was sand in the cut. Salt water dripped from his hair. There wasn’t a single drop of blood.
It occurred to me then that maybe Wil Hines didn’t have blood in his veins like everyone else. Maybe he was made of Florida things: grains of bleached sand, sea foam, and salt. Wind and sun. Maybe he was made of the things he loved best.
But I don’t think that now. I don’t think we’re made of the things we love best, or the things we say or don’t when we think no one is listening, or the very worst things we do. I don’t think we are the things that happen to us, the circumstances beyond our control. I guess I don’t want to believe that I am drunken mistakes, an absentee father, or a terrible secret. I don’t want to believe that Wil and I are his terrible secret, either. That it could define us for the rest of our lives.
I am sitting at Minna’s bedside, reading her passages from a Pablo Neruda anthology someone left at the nurse’s station (“I want / to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees”) when Wil brings flowers into the room. Seeing him now is like seeing him for the first time in centuries, and I’m breathless. The flowers are a deep purple that only appears on the horizon for a second before nightfall. Wil is dressed in a collared shirt and nice pants, a belt and real shoes. He’s dressed for a life we don’t live. Something is happening. My body knows.
“How’s she doing?” He rests the flowers on her bedside, near a bunch of sagging balloons Mom and Micah brought yesterday. His brows are arched and his mouth is slightly open. His face is a constant question.
“She squeezed my hand this morning,” I tell him. My eyes get full just thinking about it. “I think she knew it was me.”
“That’s awesome.” He bends over my chair and kisses me sweetly, awkwardly on my cheekbone. His mouth, the way he rests his hands on my shoulders, the curve of his body when we sleep tucked into each other: all questions from his body to mine. Questions I haven’t answered.
I nod. “The doctors told Virginia that her vitals were strong and her brain activity looks good. So I think they’re hoping for a turnaround soon.”
Wil pulls a chair next to me and we watch Minna. We watch the electric-green lines that chart her heartbeat.
“Want to go on a walk?” he asks. “There’s a garden out back. You can almost see the water.”
I pull Minna’s covers around her and we take the elevator down. Outside, the air is heavy and hot, pressing me into the earth. We find the garden, a small bricked labyrinth of boxwoods and punch-colored angel-wing begonias and rain lilies. We sit on a polished teak bench with a gold plaque.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too.” I am suddenly aware of my heaviness, of the stale sour film coating my tongue and the grainy tired settled behind my eyes. “I’m so tired, Wil.”
“I know you are.” His voice ripples. “Because of me.”
I shake my head. Salt water leaks from the corners of my eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault. What happened to you that night . . . was outside of your control.” I know that more every second, feel sure of it. I lean over and my mouth finds his mouth. He is my only comfort and I choose him.
He pulls away, but we stay close. The tickle of his breath on my nose, the warmth of his near skin revives me.
“But I can’t decide for you.” The words escape without warning, and it’s not until they are there, between us, that I realize: They’re mine. “I can love you, and I do and I will. But I can’t decide what to do with this. I won’t make that decision for you. You have to—” My voice breaks. “That’s something you can control.”
He sucks all the air from the atmosphere, then exhales it.
“I know,” he says. “I can’t ask you to tell me what to do. And I can’t ask you to hold on to this . . . this shitty secret about me.” His face cracks.
“I would do it for you.” I press my hand against his cheek, and he leans into it. “That’s how much I love you.”
“My mom told me that she came to see you. Asked you not to say anything. It’s just not fair. I can’t ask that of you. I would never ask that of you.” Frantically, Wil kisses my cheeks, my nose, my mouth. His lips absorb my tears.
I fight for a breath as he reaches into his back pocket. Hands me a folded envelope. On it is a single name in his messy boy script.
Detective Porter.
“Wil.” The tears come faster now. “Wil.”
“It’s everything. All of it.” His hands are on me now, memorizing me, and mine do the same. I read his lines with the tips of my fingers like I may never read him again.
“You—” The what ifs swirl, a terrible tempest in my mind and body. “What if you’re arrested?” I can’t stand the thought of Wil without his workshop. Without the steady stroke of brushes or mallets in the dim light. Without the endless ocean. And I don’t even want to think about my own life without Wil. The mere suggestion is an impossibility.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He is pale.
“You can’t. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I can’t ask you to live with this, Bridge. It’s been hard enough just—” He gulps air. “It’s been hard enough, the past few days. You have to go to college. I won’t wreck that. I won’t let my dad wreck that.”
“Wait,” I beg. “Maybe you shouldn’t say anything. We know what happened. Maybe that’s enough. You could come to Miami with me.” I lean close and whisper it: “Come to Miami with me.”
He shakes his head slowly. “If I don’t say anything, I’m letting him run my life.” His eyes search the horizon for water. They are gorgeous shattered glass, bright with fear and will. “I won’t let him sink us like that, Bridge.”
“He won’t.” I grab his hands, curl mine around them. “He won’t.”
He watches me like he used to when we were kids on the sand, as if he might forget me if he looked away for a second. “I’ll—I’ll call you after. If I can.”
He pulls me in again, for a kiss that lasts forever. Then he brushes off his khaki pants.
“I have to go now,” he says.
“Don’t. Don’t,” I beg.
“I fancy you,” he says, and he pushes his hair away from his eyes, the way he used to do wh
en working on a boat. For a second I see him there, in the watery light of the workshop. He is building something. He is the happiest when he’s building something.
“I fancy you,” I manage.
I watch him go. I notice his every detail: his slow gait, the lines of his neck, the late-May tinge to his skin. He is Wil Hines, no one else. He is not his father, and he is not just the boy who killed him. He is the boy who loved his mother enough to save her. He is the boy who loved me enough to forgive my thousands of sins. And I will love him through this. I watch him swim out far past the breaker until he’s a dot and then the horizon swallows him and he is nothing at all. I will stay on the shore. Anchored here, always. Waiting for him to come back to me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WRITING a novel is always a team endeavor, and that has proven to be particularly true in this case. Thank you first to the most incredible editorial duo out there: Lanie Davis and Hayley Wagreich. You have poured your hearts and souls and superbrains into this project, and I am enormously thankful for your hard work. You have been thoughtful readers and critics, tireless cheerleaders, and on-call therapists. I could not have told this story without you. The dream team at Alloy Entertainment has been there not only from the start of this book, but also from the beginning of my career, and I am so very grateful for their continued support. Sara Shandler, Josh Bank, and Les Morgenstein: thank you. There are so many wonderful souls at Harper who have helped to bring this project to life. Jen Klonsky: thank you for believing in this project. Thank you for so graciously giving Wil and Bridge the time they needed to tell their story. Thank you for your sharp editorial eye and for your humor along the way. Working with you on these past two projects has been delicious. And finally, a heartfelt thank you to the publicity and marketing masterminds at Harper: Elizabeth Ward, Julie Yeater, Sabrina Abballe, Gina Rizzo, Patty Rosati, Molly Motch, and Stephanie Macy.